Name: Germans in Milwaukee
Brand: Jill Florence Lackey
SKU: 9781467147286
Price: 23.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Germans in Milwaukee

9781467147286

$23.99

Germans in Milwaukee: A Neighborhood History chronicles the stories behind the German footprints in the city.

Like no other large American city, Germans dominated Milwaukee. Their presence inhabits the city's neighborhoods from its buildings and place names to its parklands and statuary. Their influence also lives in the memories shared by local residents. A small Milwaukee neighborhood south of Miller Valley was christened after a farmer's pigs, and a busboy turned beer baron built the famous Pabst Brewery in West Town. A ghost is said to haunt the old Blatz Brewing compound. And the remains of the early tanning industry can still be seen in Walker's Point.

Compiling over 1,200 interviews through their organization, Urban Anthropology Inc., authors Jill Lackey and Richard Petrie share these ground-level perspectives of the lasting German influence on the Cream City.

Collage style book cover for Germans in Milwaukee a Neighborhood History featuring a vintage Milwaukee street scene and statues

History of Milwaukee Drag, A

9781467149174

$21.99

p>The queens that made Milwaukee famous

For over a century, drag has been an unstoppable force in Milwaukee nightlife. On June 7, 1884, "The Only Leon'? brought the fine art of female impersonation to the Grand Opera Hall, launching a proud local legacy that continues today at This Is It, La Cage, Hamburger Mary's, D.I.X. and innumerable other venues.

Historians Michail Takach and BJ Daniels recognize that today's LGBTQ liberties were born from the strength, resilience, and resistance of yesterday's gender non-conforming pioneers. This is a long overdue celebration of those stories, including high-rolling hustler of the Fourth Ward "Badlands'? Frank Blunt, over-the-top dinner theater drag superstar of the 1950s Adrian Ames, and "It Kid'? Jamie Gays, first-ever Miss Gay Milwaukee and Latin community hero.

And many, many more.

History of Milwaukee Drag poster showing a black and white performer on stairs with bold red Milwaukee Drag lettering and a lime circle reading Seven Generations of Glamour

Milwaukee's Italian Heritage

9781596298361

$21.99

The shores of Lake Michigan might seem a far cry from the coastline of the Mediterranean, even for a country famous for its opera singers. Nevertheless, enough Italians responded to the call--and returned home to repeat it confidently to brothers, brides and strangers--to create a thriving community in Milwaukee. Historians often emphasize Milwaukee's German heritage, content to relegate the story of Italian migration to New York or Chicago, but Anthony Zignego passionately explores the ways in which Italians shaped the Brew City and were shaped by it in turn. From the Gardetto family to the enterprising women of the Third Ward to Festa Italiana, Zignego presents a portrait of the immigrant experience with personal stories and interviews with "ordinary" immigrants and Milwaukeeans, explaining the community's traditions and dispelling some of its myths. Milwaukee's Italian Heritage highlights the struggles and triumphs that have always made immigration an opening clause and concluding question in the American story.

Cover image for Milwaukee's Italian Heritage, isbn: 9781596298361

Wisconsin Tobacco Farming

9781467158985

$24.99

“The great concerns of the southern states have made their products so well known that few people realized that tobacco can be grown elsewhere than Virginia and Cuba.” – Clarence Olson, Edgerton Reporter, 1953

Widely known as America’s Dairyland, Wisconsin also has a long, fertile history with tobacco. For centuries, Indigenous tribes cultivated it for spiritual, medicinal, and ceremonial purposes. First introduced commercially in Dane and Rock Counties, and later Vernon County, the crop earned a reputation among generations of local farmers as the "mortgage lifter.” Specializing in the broadleaf tobacco used to bind cigars, local farms became major producers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a lifeline for newly arrived Norwegian immigrants. Ultimately, the state’s golden age of tobacco spawned the creation of the country’s first cooperative tobacco marketing association.

Author and Wisconsin historian Gail Klein surveys the Badger State’s historic tobacco regions and the agricultural commodity’s lasting impact.

Cover image for Wisconsin Tobacco Farming, isbn: 9781467158985

Voices of Milwaukee Bronzeville

9781467148887

$21.99

A history of the Cream City's lost Black neighborhood told by the people who lived there

Some people don't have to imagine what Milwaukee's Bronzeville was like. They have only to remember. They recall Walnut Street alive with businesses serving a hard-working Black population making something out of the meager resources available to them. They describe religious establishments such as St. Marks Methodist Episcopal, St. Benedict the Moor, Calvary Baptist, and St. Matthews CME attending to the spiritual life and remember the Flame, the Metropole, and Satin Doll night clubs taking care of entertainment and secular needs. Above all, they recollect a people looking out for the well-being of all within its realm.

Gathering interviews with residents of the now vanished neighborhood, Dr. Sandra E. Jones reimagines Bronzeville not just as a place, but as a spirit engendered by a people determined to make a way out of no way.